Included in the proposal was a Diversity Statement for COM, which, under the ambitious hands of then Chair, Jenna Wozer, COM ’21, was adopted by the Dean’s Leadership Team in the Winter of 2018 as the official UNE COM Diversity Statement. With heightened success, the group reached out to Dr. Arafat to initiate faculty involvement. After presenting to the Faculty Assembly, EDAC invited faculty and staff to be part of the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (ACDI). This newly formed committee of faculty would work directly with EDAC to integrate topics of diversity and cultural sensitivity into the COM curriculum, in recruitment efforts, and through professional development.
One example of what came out of this collaboration was a Clinical Practice Competency (CPC) class devoted to taking inclusive sexual histories. Guided by COM faculty, Tristan Reynolds, DO, and led by first-year students, Karissa Rajagopal, Anna McLean, Olivia Patsos, and Bryar Hansen, COM students were taught how to tailor their intake questions to be inclusive and mindful of LGBTQI and non-gender conforming individuals. First-year COM student, Karissa Rajagopal, recalls how the session came to fruition: “We witnessed assumptions being made and brought concerns to HEAl, and then to Dr. Reynolds who suggested that we teach a course ourselves.” The students reached out to a local STI Community Clinic in Portland, ME, and a massage therapist, who were happy to stand-in as patients for the session. Earlier in January, the student facilitators attended the Health Care Response to Human Trafficking Conference in Augusta, ME, and were able to apply what they learned during the CPC. According to Karissa, “the students were completely engaged. The level of maturity was noticeable… We were able to teach identifiers of human trafficking for physicians to be aware of when seeing patients. One student said it was their most important day of med school. Another said, ‘I learned more about what I didn’t know.’”
Although EDAC is shaping brand new initiatives on campus, efforts of diversity and inclusion are not new to the UNE COM academic curriculum. Last semester, a LGBTQI+ inclusive talk was presented with the collaborative efforts of COM faculty, Susan Wehry, MD, Rebecca Rowe, PhD, Marilyn Gugliucci, PhD, and students from the Health Equality Alliance (HEAl). Visiting psychiatrist and Associate Vice Provost, Benoit Dubé, MD, lectured to first and second-year students on LGBTQI+ healthcare as part of the CPC curriculum. The talk, "LGBT Health Disparities: Social Determinants and the Legacy of Stigma," traced the history of LGBTQI+ health in the DSM, and socio-politically, in order to discuss best practices for LGBTQI+ health and ways of helping at-risk populations.
The seminar series came about nine years ago in order to meet an unmet need in the curriculum. “Law makers take directions that directly affect our patents,” Dr. Dubé states during his lecture. “The more diverse our perspectives on who our patients are, the better physicians we will be.” The message was clear and poignant: diversity and inclusion aren’t off-topic ideologies discussed for the sake of themselves; it is the
Dr. Dubé’s discussion continued throughout the evening with students from the Health Equality Alliance (HEAl), Dr. Gugliucci, and Dany Hanna, DO ’15, a urologist specializing in transgender medicine.
"The more diverse our perspectives on who our patients are, the better physicians we will be"